So many great new pics you won’t believe it!
We had a going away party in the big city park near our place, and many friends showed up. Some former students, Gianluca and his wife Roberta, another former student Roberta, her husband Graziano and their friends Monica and Davide, and Giancarlo, as well as our friend Cat from Church, our co-worker Paul, Rachelle and Luciano and baby Gaia, Kirsten and Massimo, and even our friend Enzo whom we met when he picked us up late one night when we were hitchhiking home from a club in the freezing cold, all these good people came to say goodbye, and seeing them all together, these who have invited us into their homes and their lives, made us incredible meals, taken us on daytrips around Italy, invited us to dog agility competitions, made us realize all the more how blessed we’ve been here, that these people have made Bologna a home. Trying to tell them this was rough, a bit like thanking our friends and family at our rehearsal dinner (some of you know what I’m talking about). I got through most of it after a long pause for Claire and I to stare at each other. I hope and pray that we will see these friends again, in the States, or back in Italy.
Tomorrow we fly to New York where we’ll visit our great friends Justin and Cassandra. As of August ninth our address will be:
2225 E. 37th St.
Edmond, OK 73013
Goodbye Bologna July 31, 2008
The South of France July 29, 2008
How to describe what we’ve seen today, the periwinkle shutters on fairytale buildings, brick outlined with rectangle stones, the kind streets, and then the church, St. Enenne, the oddest shape, layered woodwork old, old, a wall of confessionals and winding wooden staircase, my childhood dream of a pirate ship, old, old, back in the predawn crawling into tight spaces of meaning, life unlocked, here is a love unchallenged, never mentioned, I’m never leaving this café.
We took three trains out to Grenoble, surrounded by Alpine mountains, where Tony picked us up and drove us south through the French countryside, fields of lavender creeping into the sunny cab. We stayed with his friend Nathaniel at a sort of hippie-commune in a series of old farmhouses. We stopped in the small town of Nyons, where there’s an incredible open market. We bought a Mediterranean dish of chicken, seafood and rice, as well as three kinds of salami, four of cheese. We lunched on these in a park, said goodbye to Nathaniel and headed to Toulouse where we picked up Tony’s fiancée Laetitia from work and then headed to their place, outside of Toulouse, at a, ahem, castle. The next morning Claire and I explored Toulouse after Laetitia led us into town via subway. We were completely enchanted with the city. The vendors were friendly, the streets clean, and the buildings’ color combinations were, to us, novel. I also learned that French is the most beautiful language I’ve heard. The next day we visited Europe’s largest cave, in the Pyrenees, along with our host’s friend Romu and his parents. The following day we returned to the mountains and went on a gorgeous hike which ended at a clear mountain lake where wild horses were grazing. We were nearly ready to forget home for another year and look into rent costs in Toulouse…
T minus Two Weeks July 29, 2008
Two weeks from today, it’s arrevederci a Italia. We’re mostly excited to head back stateside, but after a year, there are some big goodbyes. We’ve been welcomed into the lives of some amazing people here, coworkers, students, and folks from the little Anglican church we’ve attended. Eleven months and it still feels bizzare that we live in Italy, even while feeling more and more at home in the city.
What will we miss? The colors of the buildings and the care that went in to making them unique. The food, at trattorias and in the markets, meats and cheeses, fruits and veggies of a completely different order than what we’d known. Shopping for said foodstuffs, in the rain or sun, through the brick or cobblestone little streets, no florescent lights, no scanning of credit cards, no competing for the best parking spot. Walking everyday, usually for an hour or two. Biking through anarchic traffic. The daytrips into nearby towns so distinct one from the next. The lack of giant store-chains. Travelling by train.
